


By The Seaside

by HotCocoaaa



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: After Five time travels but before Delores, Before Delores, Five Centric, Five thinks Ben's alive, Gen, It's before the Crazy sets in, Number Five | The Boy Does Not Get A Hug, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, The Apocalypse, Vanya's book, Wack, Why is Five Hageeves not a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-26 20:52:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18185597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HotCocoaaa/pseuds/HotCocoaaa
Summary: It’s night; sometime late. An in between- nowhere close to dusk, yet terribly far from dawn.He runs.(He doesn't need to run, not anymore; but running is the only thing he has left.)Where there were oceans, there was life. Sea life. Maybe, if Ben was alive, he’d gone to the sea. It was a thin hope, smaller than a pinhead and flimsier than a human hair- yet, it burned like an untouched candlewick regardless.





	By The Seaside

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe I'll make a follow up chapter where they do all get to go to the ocean, who knows

It’s night; sometime late. An in between- nowhere close to dusk, yet terribly far from dawn.

He runs.

The blood pounds in his ears, like his feet on pavement; then the crackle of blue plasma and the ground changes, and suddenly he’s falling again. It goes like this.

Harsh panting emanating from his lungs rises into the air like what little natural heat is left on this death world. He only knows artificial fire, created from the gas explosions of sideways and tilted crumbling buildings, the noxious fumes of oil fires and petroleum from dead dying and rusted cars.

There is nothing out here, in this wasteland.

He keeps running, running and running until his foot catches on rubble larger than himself, and then he’s the one falling, the one tilting and going down down down…

...until he lets himself fall into the crackle of blue electricity, a rip in the fabric of reality. A hum no one is left to hear but himself, and then he’s fifty miles away, running still, ever running.

(He doesn't need to run, not anymore; but running is the only thing he has left.)

The only thing past the ash clouds that smother the night sky and her stars, is the ash that rains down.

When he’d first come here, after the realizations, and after the callous, apathetic buckling down to earth, the seismic tremors still rippling through the smoking rubble under his feet had fazed him. They’d rumbled and crackled and once, he’d set his feet to crumbled ground only to fall to his knees from the shaking.

He’d been stupid to forget Yellowstone.

Ash, ash, ash. There was only one constant, here in this toxic wasteland; ash.

Sucking in another acrid lungful of poisonous air, he coughed harshly, feet still hitting and pounding along the grayed out, shriveled grass with a feverous intent, running, ever running. The blackened, charred night sky above him was unforgiving as ever. If his own father could never love him, how could Mother Earth ever forgive him?

He’d been so sick, the first few weeks here.

The noxious fumes had weakened and sickened his lungs, nothing to eat and no undirited water to drink; half of an ozone layer gone and everything from sunlit radiation to meteorites raining through. Sulfurous air with not nearly enough nitrogen left to breathe in, a metallic tang with every breath he knew came from the pulverized metal particles of the steel that humans so loved.

He’d thought he’d die within the month; he was be-founded to survive over a year.

He supposed that if anything, it _was_ Mother Earth’s forgiveness. Though, he couldn’t quite push away the guilty thought that death would be kinder.

He ran, and ran, and ran. Giving a final push through the void to another fifty- a hundred- a thousand miles, who knew? He landed, heaving and collapsing to his knees with an scream unheard by any other human ears.

He fell forward, hands splaying palm out along the seaside road under him, stained gray with ash.

It had rained, though very few times, _it had rained_. The water had fell from the sky and split apart the ever present ash clouds, leaving rivers and torrents of dirty, sulfuric water streaming down the sides of bent buildings and cracked roads.

Which meant there were still oceans.

Once the sickness and poison and venom had left him, weakened but alive; once he’d buried his siblings, all heart-wrenchingly _five_ of them; after he’d spent half a year in an abandoned library, reading everything he could; he’d gotten up, dusted off his cargo pants stolen from a dilapidated department store, and followed the rain.

Because where there were oceans, there was life.

Sea life.

Maybe, if Ben was alive, he’d gone to the sea.

It was a thin hope, smaller than a pinhead and flimsier than a human hair- yet, it burned like an untouched candlewick regardless

He sits for what feels like hours, just trying to inhale un-breathable air, replenish the strength in his body so used up from days of teleporting just to get here, the pacific coast. Funny, his siblings had always wanted to visit the west coat one day; He wonders if they ever had. 

He stands up, closing his eyes. He stumbles forward, hands grasping onto the steel bar people put on highways to prevent cars from falling over cliffs, and takes a breath.

He could smell it, he could feel it; there was a sea breeze.

Slowly, every so slowly, Five opens his eyes.

Nothing.

He sinks down with a strangled sob; there is _nothing_ because everything is _dead_.

The sickly blackened ocean, yellowed and toxic and destroyed, gazes unseeingly back. It’s caustic waves crashing and breaking along the ash covered, gray beach. Five feels tears gathering in his eyes, tipping forwards and over, and he squeezed his eyes shut desperately, trying to save what little water he has left.

The ocean crashes unforgivingly before him.

Further out, he could see, past over turned, rotting boats and buoys made of oil canisters- light bespectacled, blueish waves rolling, but it was far, much too far to reach, even for himself, and certainly not for Ben.

Five drags himself to standing, and slowly, surely, skids down the cliff side, gathering dirt and small rocks into a large plastic box stored in one of the neon colored backpacks on his shoulders as he goes. Once it’s filled, he slides all the way down to the small coastal town below, tucked just in front of the ash coated beach.

He walks underneath of the broken and ripped boardwalk, uncaring about trampling and harming dunes, because there is no living wildlife to harm.

Eventually, he makes it out to the beach itself, and kneels down, settling so he can take off his heavy combat boots- ones made for army work. Tough terrains.

These days, everywhere is a tough terrain.

He settles them on top of the sand along with his socks, and tentatively sets bare feet onto grayed sand. The ash clings to his toes immediately, and coats the bottoms of his feet. It's thin, though, and with a few wiggles, he can feel real sand beneath the souls of his feet. Five closes his eyes, and sighs. He bites down on his lip, and doesn't think about Alison laying on the library couches one march, wishing vicariously to go to California one day; _"The land of the surfers and the movie stars!"_ she'd dreampt in wonder, spreading her hands above her. _"If I ever go someday, I'm going to see the ocean first. I wonder if it's as blue as it looks in the movies?"_   

Five bites down hard with his back teeth, and places the backpack filled with plastic boxes of dirt and rocks next to his boots, scuffed and worn despite barely a few months of use. The other bag, garishly orange compared to the neon green of the dirt one, he slips off his remaining shoulder and sets in his lap. Around the straps, his fingers tighten. 

 _"Well, I think it would be. I mean, it's not like they can change the color of the ocean?"_ Vanya's voice rings in his head, and Five lets the sight of her melted chocolate eyes roll off of his back. He doesn't need them right now; He's here for water, and for Ben, if his brother did escape to the sea, after all. 

Pulling out the garden spade and two other large plastic packing boxes he thought to bring, Five picks up both the bag and himself to walk barefooted down the charcoal gray beach, the closest he can get to the water while staying as far away from it as possible for his needs.

He needs both refined and grainy sand. If he’s going to create a proper rainwater filter, he’ll need both.

Five falls to his knees in the sand, bare toes digging into the soft silt behind him as waves break before him, and tries not to break himself.

 _‘Hey, Ben!_ ’ He wants to call. _‘Where are you? I’ve been looking.’_

_‘It’s not funny anymore, Ben.’_

_“Where are you, Ben?!”_

He holds back his tears, piles plastic boxes full of sand, and teleports back up the hill. He gives the shadow of an ocean one last look before he turns away, and starts the journey back to where his home once lied. Maybe later, next spring, he can make the trek to Lake Superior, or the Atlantic. Maybe Ben is there.

It isn’t until days later, when he’s home again, sat in the library pouring over books and books while he waits for it to rain, does he find Vanya’s novel.

He lets himself cry, then.

**Author's Note:**

> If you didn't get it, Ben dies probably somewhere around 18-20, so Vanya put it in her book, which is how Five finds out how Ben dies when he reads it. Up until that point, he holds out hope that Ben's still out there. As for Vanya not technically dying at the manor the first time 'round, I am too lazy to go back and change it so whoop-dee-doo he buries her too.


End file.
